Duke Orsino:
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
Twelfth Night Act 1, scene 1, 1–3
All of us have foods that we associate with romantic occasions or loved ones. Maybe it’s a decadent chocolate dessert or spaghetti and meatballs a la Lady and the Tramp. Whatever the food, it’s fun to remember those romantic times and the food that helped make them truly special.
When Rich and I were dating, the first meal he ever cooked for me was Welsh Rarebit out of the 1971 revised version of the 1959 classic, The James Beard Cookbook. We still have that paperback cookbook with its $1.25 price noted on the front. I remember being so impressed that Rich could cook such a sophisticated dish with such an exotic sounding name. I had never had it before and thought it was just delicious. I still love this dish and Rich still loves cooking it for me.
James Beard’s Welsh Rarebit
1 lb. sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1 T. butter
1 cup ale or beer
1 egg
1 t. dry mustard
2 t. Worcestershire sauce
Using a double boiler, heat the water in the lower section and melt the butter in the upper section. Add the grated cheese and stir until it melts. Very slowly add the ale or beer, blending it in. Beat the egg slightly with the mustard and Worcestershire sauce, and add a few spoonfuls of the cheese mixture. Then slowly stir the egg mixture into the cheese, being sure that they blend thoroughly. Do not let the water boil, and do not let the cheese mixture get too hot or the egg with curdle. As soon as it is hot through, serve it over well-buttered toast.
Note: We serve it over toasted French bread that has been topped with crisp fried bacon. Serve with a tossed green salad and a good wine. Yumm!!
#####
This recipe is from the Hotel Roanoke in Roanoke, VA. Rich and I used to go there on special occasions in our early years of marriage. This was one of our favorite dishes and continues to be something we like to cook together.
Steak Diane
Take two nice beef fillets (I use fillet mignon) and pound them until they are about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.
In a pan, melt 2-3 T of butter and lightly brown the meat on both sides. Remove the meat. Add chopped shallots, garlic, mushrooms, and a splash of Worchester sauce to the pan and saute until the mushrooms are soft. (I didn't list the amount of shallots, garlic, mushrooms or Worchester because you can use as much or as little as you like.)
Move the mushroom/shallot/garlic mixture to the side of the pan and add the steaks again, cooking... on medium-low heat... until medium well (depending on the thickness of the meat, it should only take a couple of minutes on each side). Smear a little Dijon mustard on top of the meat. Pour a little brandy over the meat and flambe. BE CAREFUL! If you pour too much brandy on the meat or if you get too close, your romantic meal could turn into a kitchen tragedy!!
This dish is great served with risotto. I usually spoon a little of the sauce on top of the risotto as well. Add a nice salad, some crusty bread, and a good Zinfandel or Cab Franc and you've got a great meal!
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Comfort Food...
The inspiration for this cookbook/recipe blog came from Beth Macy, journalist extraordinaire and darn good cook. Beth and Rich worked together for many years at The Roanoke Times. She gave Rich and me a cookbook a few years ago that she lovingly wrote and illustrated. She was kind enough to include one of my recipes in the book. I now want to share a recipe from her book, “Red Tongs & Tomato Pie ~ Comfort Food That Won’t Kill Ya.”
This is what Beth says about the following recipe:
My favorite-ever-Sunday-afternoon-in-winter food, from my favorite-ever collection of food essays: “More Home Cooking — A Winter Returns to the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin.”
Laurie Colwin’s Best-Ever Tomato Pie
The pie has a double biscuit-dough crust, made by blending 2 cups flour, 1 stick butter, 4 t. baking powder, and approximately ¾ cup milk, either by hand or in a food processor. Roll out half the dough on a floured surface and line a 9” pie plate with it. Then add tomatoes (use either 2 lbs. of fresh tomatoes, peeled and sliced, or 2 – 28 oz. cans plum tomatoes, drained well and sliced.) Scatter the tomatoes with chopped basil, chives, or scallions, depending on their availability and your mood. Grate 1 ½ cups sharp cheddar cheese and sprinkle I cup of it on top of the tomatoes. Then over this, drizzle 1/3 cup mayonnaise that has been thinned with 2 T. lemon juice and top everything with the rest of the grated cheese. Roll out the remaining dough, fit it over the filling, and pinch the edges of the dough together to seal. Cut several steam vents in the top crust and bake the pie at 400° for about 25 minutes. The secret of this pie is to reheat it before serving, which among other things ensures that the cheese is soft and gooey.
Bonus Tomato Recipe: Laurie’s Roasted Tomatoes
Take 2 or 3 cans good quality tomatoes and drain
Spread out on a baking sheet
Drizzle with olive oil
Sprinkle with chopped garlic and salt
Bake at 325° for 20 minutes or so
Serve on crackers or bread with goat cheese, good Irish cheddar, or nothing at all.
########
Nov. 6, 2011
Here is a yummy soup that my good friend Mary Ann Snyder gave me. It is from a Pillsbury Slow Cooker cookbook.
Fire Roasted Tomato Chicken Tortilla Soup
Prep time: 20 Min
Start to finish: 7 hours & 20 minutes
Servings: 7( 1 1/4 cups each)
1 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 carton(32 oz) Progresso Chicken Broth
2 cups Green Giant Niblets frozen whole kernal corn
1 can (14.5 oz) Muir Glen organic fire roasted diced tomatoes, undrained
1 can (15 oz) Progresso black beans, drained, rinsed
1 sweet red bell pepper, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)
9 corn tortillas (6 inch), cut into 1/2 inch wide strips
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper(cayenne)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
lime wedges, if desired
chopped avocado, if desired
1. In 3-4 quart slow cooker, combine chicken, chicken broth, corn, tomatoes, black beans, bell pepper, onion, 6 of the tortillas, chili powder, cumin, salt, and red pepper. Cover; cook on low heat setting 5-7 hours or on high setting 3-4 hours or until juice of chicken is clear when center of thickest part is cut(165 F).
2. Remove chicken; shred with 2 forks. Return to slow cooker. Stir in cilantro.
3. Heat oil in 9-inch skillet. Cook strips from remaining 3 tortillas in oil over medium heat about 3-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until crisp and light golden brown. Top individual servings of soup with tortilla strips, lime wedges, and/or avocado.
For those counting calories... 1 serving = 350 calories; total fat = 11g.; total carbs = 41 g.; fiber = 9g.; protein = 22g. Weight Watchers Points Plus = 9 points per serving.
########
Nov. 14, 2011
Here's a dish that has "comfort" written all over it from my friend, Robin Scott, in Roanoke, VA...
Slow-Cooked Mac'nCheese
1 pkg (16oz) elbow macaroni
1/2 cup butter (melted)
2 eggs, beaten
1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk
1 can (10 3/4 oz) condensed cheddar cheese soup, undiluted
1 cup milk
4 cups (16 pz) shredded cheddar cheese, divided (3 c/ 1c)
1/8 t paprika
Cook macaroni according to pkg directions. Drain. Place in 5 qt slow cooker. Add butter. In bowl, combine eggs, evaporated milk, soup, milk and 3 C cheese. Pour over macaroni and stir to combine. Cover and cook on low for 4 hrs.
Sprinkle with remaining 1 C cheese and cook 15 more mins. Sprinkle with paprika.
(Yield 10 servings)
This is what Beth says about the following recipe:
My favorite-ever-Sunday-afternoon-in-winter food, from my favorite-ever collection of food essays: “More Home Cooking — A Winter Returns to the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin.”
Laurie Colwin’s Best-Ever Tomato Pie
The pie has a double biscuit-dough crust, made by blending 2 cups flour, 1 stick butter, 4 t. baking powder, and approximately ¾ cup milk, either by hand or in a food processor. Roll out half the dough on a floured surface and line a 9” pie plate with it. Then add tomatoes (use either 2 lbs. of fresh tomatoes, peeled and sliced, or 2 – 28 oz. cans plum tomatoes, drained well and sliced.) Scatter the tomatoes with chopped basil, chives, or scallions, depending on their availability and your mood. Grate 1 ½ cups sharp cheddar cheese and sprinkle I cup of it on top of the tomatoes. Then over this, drizzle 1/3 cup mayonnaise that has been thinned with 2 T. lemon juice and top everything with the rest of the grated cheese. Roll out the remaining dough, fit it over the filling, and pinch the edges of the dough together to seal. Cut several steam vents in the top crust and bake the pie at 400° for about 25 minutes. The secret of this pie is to reheat it before serving, which among other things ensures that the cheese is soft and gooey.
Bonus Tomato Recipe: Laurie’s Roasted Tomatoes
Take 2 or 3 cans good quality tomatoes and drain
Spread out on a baking sheet
Drizzle with olive oil
Sprinkle with chopped garlic and salt
Bake at 325° for 20 minutes or so
Serve on crackers or bread with goat cheese, good Irish cheddar, or nothing at all.
########
Nov. 6, 2011
Here is a yummy soup that my good friend Mary Ann Snyder gave me. It is from a Pillsbury Slow Cooker cookbook.
Fire Roasted Tomato Chicken Tortilla Soup
Prep time: 20 Min
Start to finish: 7 hours & 20 minutes
Servings: 7( 1 1/4 cups each)
1 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 carton(32 oz) Progresso Chicken Broth
2 cups Green Giant Niblets frozen whole kernal corn
1 can (14.5 oz) Muir Glen organic fire roasted diced tomatoes, undrained
1 can (15 oz) Progresso black beans, drained, rinsed
1 sweet red bell pepper, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)
9 corn tortillas (6 inch), cut into 1/2 inch wide strips
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper(cayenne)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
lime wedges, if desired
chopped avocado, if desired
1. In 3-4 quart slow cooker, combine chicken, chicken broth, corn, tomatoes, black beans, bell pepper, onion, 6 of the tortillas, chili powder, cumin, salt, and red pepper. Cover; cook on low heat setting 5-7 hours or on high setting 3-4 hours or until juice of chicken is clear when center of thickest part is cut(165 F).
2. Remove chicken; shred with 2 forks. Return to slow cooker. Stir in cilantro.
3. Heat oil in 9-inch skillet. Cook strips from remaining 3 tortillas in oil over medium heat about 3-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until crisp and light golden brown. Top individual servings of soup with tortilla strips, lime wedges, and/or avocado.
For those counting calories... 1 serving = 350 calories; total fat = 11g.; total carbs = 41 g.; fiber = 9g.; protein = 22g. Weight Watchers Points Plus = 9 points per serving.
########
Nov. 14, 2011
Here's a dish that has "comfort" written all over it from my friend, Robin Scott, in Roanoke, VA...
Slow-Cooked Mac'nCheese
1 pkg (16oz) elbow macaroni
1/2 cup butter (melted)
2 eggs, beaten
1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk
1 can (10 3/4 oz) condensed cheddar cheese soup, undiluted
1 cup milk
4 cups (16 pz) shredded cheddar cheese, divided (3 c/ 1c)
1/8 t paprika
Cook macaroni according to pkg directions. Drain. Place in 5 qt slow cooker. Add butter. In bowl, combine eggs, evaporated milk, soup, milk and 3 C cheese. Pour over macaroni and stir to combine. Cover and cook on low for 4 hrs.
Sprinkle with remaining 1 C cheese and cook 15 more mins. Sprinkle with paprika.
(Yield 10 servings)
Sweets...
When we moved to Illinois nearly 6 years ago, we were blessed to find a house next door to the sweetest people I know… Lucille and Bill Carlyle. They quickly became good friends and “shared custody” of our dachshund, Gracie. We moved to another house in Champaign (7 miles away) last summer, but we still consider Lucille and Bill our neighbors and always our good friends. How appropriate to start off my section on Sweets, with recipes from Sweet Lucille!
Ice Cream Pie
1 cup sifted flour
¼ cup quick oats
¼ cup brown sugar
½ cup chopped pecans
Mix the above ingredients thoroughly and pat into a well-buttered pan. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes. Take out of the oven and mix with a spoon until it crumbles and let cool.
Pat ½ crumbs into buttered 9”-10” pie pan. Drizzle ¼ jar butterscotch topping over the crumbs and freeze. Soften 3 lbs. Baskin-Robbins pralines and cream ice cream and then spread over the frozen mixture. Drizzle with ¼ jar butterscotch topping and the remaining crumbs. Freeze again.
You may also use chocolate almond or mocha ice creams instead of the pralines and cream.
Lorna Doone Dessert
Crust:
1 pkg. Lorna Doone cookies, crushed. Mix with 1 stick margarine. Put in 9 x 13 pyrex dish and set in freezer while preparing the filling.
Filling: 2 small pkgs. instant vanilla pudding mix and 2 cups milk. Add 1 qt. butter pecan ice cream, softened. Pour filling over crust and chill in refrigerator until set. Frost with Cool Whip and sprinkle with crushed Heath Bars or Heath Bit O’ Brickle.
Note: Recipe fits 10” pie plate very full. You may also use butter pecan pudding mix and praline pecan ice cream.
Fudge Pie
Mix together
1 ½ cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1 cup hot water
¼ t. salt
Heat to boiling and remove from heat. Add ½ cup milk. Beat 2 egg yolks with ¼ cup milk. Add to other ingredients and cook until thick. Remove from heat and add 2 T. butter and 1 t. vanilla.
Pour into a baked pie crust and top with Cool Whip and pecans.
#####
Pat Dillard is a dear friend of mine from Roanoke. We worked together for a few years at the Presbyterian Community Center and she is another one of my spiritual mentors. Pat and I have one big thing in common... we love good food! Here are three of her favorite sweet recipes...
PUFFED PASTRY
½ cup butter, softened 1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup all-purpose flour 3 eggs
2 TBS water Powdered Sugar Glaze
½ cup butter Chopped nuts (optional)
1 tsp almond extract
Heat oven to 350. Cut ½ cup butter into 1 cup flour until particles are mealy. Sprinkle 2 TBS water over flour mixture; use fork to mix. Gather mixture into
a ball; divide into halves. Pat each half into a rectangle, 12’x3” on an ungreased
cookie sheet. The rectangles should be around 3” apart.
Heat ½ butter and 1 cup water to rolling boil: remove from heat. Quickly stir in
almond extract and 1 cup of flour. Stir vigorously over low heat until mixture forms
a ball, about 1 minute; remove from heat. Add eggs; beat until smooth and glossy.
Spread half of the topping over each rectangle. Bake until topping is crisp and brown, about 1 hour; cool. Topping will shrink and fall forming a custardy top. Spread with powdered sugar glaze and nuts if desired.
Powdered Sugar Glaze: Mix 1½ cups of powdered sugar, 2 TBS butter softened, and 1tsp vanilla. Stir in 1 to 2 TBS of warm water, tsp at a time until smooth and a good consistency.
This has been a continued favorite in the family and everyone I give the recipe to.
FRENCH DEEP DISH APPLE PIE
In a bowl sift together 2 ½ cups of flour and ½ tsp salt. Cut in 1 ½ sticks or
¾ cup butter until the mixture is mealy. Mix together 2 egg yolks, lightly beaten, 7 TBS apple cider or apple juice. Add 1TBS lemon juice. With a fork gradually work the egg yolk mixture into the flour until the pastry holds together.
Divide it in half and roll out one half on a lightly floured board. Press the pastry onto the bottom and sides of a 9” deep pie dish. Chill the shell and the remaining pastry.
Peel and core 6 large greening apples and slice them thinly. Mix together 1 cup sugar, 1TBS flour, ½ tsp each of cinnamon and nutmeg and a pinch of salt. Toss in ¾ cup raisins coated with 1TBS flour. In the pie shell arrange alternate layers of the apples and sugar mixture and the raisins. Cover the top of the pie with the remaining pastry, thinly rolled.
Slash the top in several places and seal the edges of the pie. Bake the pie in a moderate oven 350 for 60-70 minutes or until the pastry of golden. Cool the pie thoroughly. Depending on the oven, top of pie can get brown because of the eggs and apple cider. I always think that juicy apples helped this recipe because it tends to get a little dry in the baking. My husband made this every fall when the apples came in. I haven’t made it since he died 3 years ago but writing this has whetted my appetite. This recipe came from a 1960’s Gourmet magazine.
APPLE CUSTARD PIE
7 Medium Apples; grated
2 whole eggs beaten
2 TBS flour
1-1/2 cups sugar depending on tartness of apples
¼ tsp nutmeg and a dash of allspice
1tsp vanilla
1TBS milk
Mix all dry ingredients together. Add vanilla and milk to beaten eggs and then add to grated apples
Mix apples, eggs, vanilla and milk to dry ingredients until thoroughly mixed.
Pour into unbaked pie shell and bake at 400 for 10 minutes; reduce heat to 325 and bake for 1 hour or until brown. YUM!
This was my Mom’s favorite recipe. I’m not sure where she got it, but I have never been able to make the flaky pie crust she used to make. She had the touch.
#####
This recipe really could go under "You CAN Go Home Again," but it is such a good and easy "sweet" recipe, that I thought I'd put it here. I have made it with peaches, blackberries, and blueberries. Once I used peaches AND blueberries and it was wonderful.
Margaret's Peach Cobbler
Melt one stick of butter (or margarine) in a casserole dish. Make sure the dish isn't too deep so the cobbler will cook through.
In a bowl, stir together 1 cup sugar, 1 cup self-rising flour, and 2/3 cup milk.
Pour mixture over the melted butter or margarine. Do not stir!
Add peaches... about 2 cups, peeled and sliced. Again, do not stir. You can use canned peaches, but drain off most of the juice if you do. I have also made this with fresh blueberries and fresh blackberries.
Bake at 350° for about 30 minutes or until lightly brown on top and firm to the touch.
Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. Yummm!
Here is another one of my favorite sweet recipes. I've seen variations on this recipe... one includes 1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter. You could also substitute walnuts or almonds for the pecans.
Preacher Cookies
* 2 cups sugar
* 1/2 cup milk
* 2 cups uncooked oatmeal (quick cook)
* 1 t. vanilla
* 1 stick margarine or butter
* 1/2 cup cocoa
* 1 cup chopped pecans or coconut
Combine sugar, margarine/butter, and milk in sauce pan and boil for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and add cocoa, oatmeal, vanilla and nuts or coconut. Beat quickly while hot. Then drop onto a baking sheet or counter-top that has been lined with parchment paper or waxed paper. When completely cooled, remove to an air-tight container and keep in a cool place or refrigerate.
#####
July 24, 2011
Rich and I went to a Greek dinner recently and had a wonderful meal. The cake that was served for dessert was amazing. I asked my friend, Claire Skaperdas, if she happened to have a recipe for a cake like the one we had and she did. Here it is..
Karithopita
6 eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp orange peel, grated
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 cup ground zwieback crumbs
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup ground walnuts
Syrup
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 tsp orange rind
1 Tbs lemon juice
Beat egg yolks until thick. Add sugar, cinnamon, orange peel.
In another bowl beat egg whites with cream of tartar till stiff. Fold yolk mixture into egg whites,
Sift flour, baking powder. Fold into egg mixture.
Fold in nuts.
Bake in greased 9 x 13 inch pan for 40 minutes at 350 or until done. Test to make sure cake is firm.
Bring to boil all the syrup ingredients and simmer for 10 minutes. COOL.
Carefully pour cool syrup over hot cake.
(Note: A very important tip when making Greek desserts that require a syrup. The syrup must always be cool. I make mine before I begin to make the cake or even a couple of hours before otherwise when you pour hot syrup over hot cake, the cake tends to fall apart.)
When cake is completely cool cut into diamond (traditional shape) shape. Cover the cake and let stand for several hours. Actually the cake is best made a day or 2 before serving, if you can wait that long!
Ice Cream Pie
1 cup sifted flour
¼ cup quick oats
¼ cup brown sugar
½ cup chopped pecans
Mix the above ingredients thoroughly and pat into a well-buttered pan. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes. Take out of the oven and mix with a spoon until it crumbles and let cool.
Pat ½ crumbs into buttered 9”-10” pie pan. Drizzle ¼ jar butterscotch topping over the crumbs and freeze. Soften 3 lbs. Baskin-Robbins pralines and cream ice cream and then spread over the frozen mixture. Drizzle with ¼ jar butterscotch topping and the remaining crumbs. Freeze again.
You may also use chocolate almond or mocha ice creams instead of the pralines and cream.
Lorna Doone Dessert
Crust:
1 pkg. Lorna Doone cookies, crushed. Mix with 1 stick margarine. Put in 9 x 13 pyrex dish and set in freezer while preparing the filling.
Filling: 2 small pkgs. instant vanilla pudding mix and 2 cups milk. Add 1 qt. butter pecan ice cream, softened. Pour filling over crust and chill in refrigerator until set. Frost with Cool Whip and sprinkle with crushed Heath Bars or Heath Bit O’ Brickle.
Note: Recipe fits 10” pie plate very full. You may also use butter pecan pudding mix and praline pecan ice cream.
Fudge Pie
Mix together
1 ½ cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1 cup hot water
¼ t. salt
Heat to boiling and remove from heat. Add ½ cup milk. Beat 2 egg yolks with ¼ cup milk. Add to other ingredients and cook until thick. Remove from heat and add 2 T. butter and 1 t. vanilla.
Pour into a baked pie crust and top with Cool Whip and pecans.
#####
Pat Dillard is a dear friend of mine from Roanoke. We worked together for a few years at the Presbyterian Community Center and she is another one of my spiritual mentors. Pat and I have one big thing in common... we love good food! Here are three of her favorite sweet recipes...
PUFFED PASTRY
½ cup butter, softened 1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup all-purpose flour 3 eggs
2 TBS water Powdered Sugar Glaze
½ cup butter Chopped nuts (optional)
1 tsp almond extract
Heat oven to 350. Cut ½ cup butter into 1 cup flour until particles are mealy. Sprinkle 2 TBS water over flour mixture; use fork to mix. Gather mixture into
a ball; divide into halves. Pat each half into a rectangle, 12’x3” on an ungreased
cookie sheet. The rectangles should be around 3” apart.
Heat ½ butter and 1 cup water to rolling boil: remove from heat. Quickly stir in
almond extract and 1 cup of flour. Stir vigorously over low heat until mixture forms
a ball, about 1 minute; remove from heat. Add eggs; beat until smooth and glossy.
Spread half of the topping over each rectangle. Bake until topping is crisp and brown, about 1 hour; cool. Topping will shrink and fall forming a custardy top. Spread with powdered sugar glaze and nuts if desired.
Powdered Sugar Glaze: Mix 1½ cups of powdered sugar, 2 TBS butter softened, and 1tsp vanilla. Stir in 1 to 2 TBS of warm water, tsp at a time until smooth and a good consistency.
This has been a continued favorite in the family and everyone I give the recipe to.
FRENCH DEEP DISH APPLE PIE
In a bowl sift together 2 ½ cups of flour and ½ tsp salt. Cut in 1 ½ sticks or
¾ cup butter until the mixture is mealy. Mix together 2 egg yolks, lightly beaten, 7 TBS apple cider or apple juice. Add 1TBS lemon juice. With a fork gradually work the egg yolk mixture into the flour until the pastry holds together.
Divide it in half and roll out one half on a lightly floured board. Press the pastry onto the bottom and sides of a 9” deep pie dish. Chill the shell and the remaining pastry.
Peel and core 6 large greening apples and slice them thinly. Mix together 1 cup sugar, 1TBS flour, ½ tsp each of cinnamon and nutmeg and a pinch of salt. Toss in ¾ cup raisins coated with 1TBS flour. In the pie shell arrange alternate layers of the apples and sugar mixture and the raisins. Cover the top of the pie with the remaining pastry, thinly rolled.
Slash the top in several places and seal the edges of the pie. Bake the pie in a moderate oven 350 for 60-70 minutes or until the pastry of golden. Cool the pie thoroughly. Depending on the oven, top of pie can get brown because of the eggs and apple cider. I always think that juicy apples helped this recipe because it tends to get a little dry in the baking. My husband made this every fall when the apples came in. I haven’t made it since he died 3 years ago but writing this has whetted my appetite. This recipe came from a 1960’s Gourmet magazine.
APPLE CUSTARD PIE
7 Medium Apples; grated
2 whole eggs beaten
2 TBS flour
1-1/2 cups sugar depending on tartness of apples
¼ tsp nutmeg and a dash of allspice
1tsp vanilla
1TBS milk
Mix all dry ingredients together. Add vanilla and milk to beaten eggs and then add to grated apples
Mix apples, eggs, vanilla and milk to dry ingredients until thoroughly mixed.
Pour into unbaked pie shell and bake at 400 for 10 minutes; reduce heat to 325 and bake for 1 hour or until brown. YUM!
This was my Mom’s favorite recipe. I’m not sure where she got it, but I have never been able to make the flaky pie crust she used to make. She had the touch.
#####
This recipe really could go under "You CAN Go Home Again," but it is such a good and easy "sweet" recipe, that I thought I'd put it here. I have made it with peaches, blackberries, and blueberries. Once I used peaches AND blueberries and it was wonderful.
Margaret's Peach Cobbler
Melt one stick of butter (or margarine) in a casserole dish. Make sure the dish isn't too deep so the cobbler will cook through.
In a bowl, stir together 1 cup sugar, 1 cup self-rising flour, and 2/3 cup milk.
Pour mixture over the melted butter or margarine. Do not stir!
Add peaches... about 2 cups, peeled and sliced. Again, do not stir. You can use canned peaches, but drain off most of the juice if you do. I have also made this with fresh blueberries and fresh blackberries.
Bake at 350° for about 30 minutes or until lightly brown on top and firm to the touch.
Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. Yummm!
Here is another one of my favorite sweet recipes. I've seen variations on this recipe... one includes 1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter. You could also substitute walnuts or almonds for the pecans.
Preacher Cookies
* 2 cups sugar
* 1/2 cup milk
* 2 cups uncooked oatmeal (quick cook)
* 1 t. vanilla
* 1 stick margarine or butter
* 1/2 cup cocoa
* 1 cup chopped pecans or coconut
Combine sugar, margarine/butter, and milk in sauce pan and boil for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and add cocoa, oatmeal, vanilla and nuts or coconut. Beat quickly while hot. Then drop onto a baking sheet or counter-top that has been lined with parchment paper or waxed paper. When completely cooled, remove to an air-tight container and keep in a cool place or refrigerate.
#####
July 24, 2011
Rich and I went to a Greek dinner recently and had a wonderful meal. The cake that was served for dessert was amazing. I asked my friend, Claire Skaperdas, if she happened to have a recipe for a cake like the one we had and she did. Here it is..
Karithopita
6 eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp orange peel, grated
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 cup ground zwieback crumbs
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup ground walnuts
Syrup
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 tsp orange rind
1 Tbs lemon juice
Beat egg yolks until thick. Add sugar, cinnamon, orange peel.
In another bowl beat egg whites with cream of tartar till stiff. Fold yolk mixture into egg whites,
Sift flour, baking powder. Fold into egg mixture.
Fold in nuts.
Bake in greased 9 x 13 inch pan for 40 minutes at 350 or until done. Test to make sure cake is firm.
Bring to boil all the syrup ingredients and simmer for 10 minutes. COOL.
Carefully pour cool syrup over hot cake.
(Note: A very important tip when making Greek desserts that require a syrup. The syrup must always be cool. I make mine before I begin to make the cake or even a couple of hours before otherwise when you pour hot syrup over hot cake, the cake tends to fall apart.)
When cake is completely cool cut into diamond (traditional shape) shape. Cover the cake and let stand for several hours. Actually the cake is best made a day or 2 before serving, if you can wait that long!
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Not Eating, But Still Cooking...
Roger Ebert is an Urbana, Illinois favorite son. This article in today's New York Times warrants a post on this recipe blog. Remember how precious a gift it is to enjoy a good meal!
August 31, 2010
Roger Ebert: No Longer an Eater, Still a Cook
By KIM SEVERSON
Harbert, Mich.
THE first several minutes at a restaurant with Roger Ebert are awkward.
It’s not that you can’t find a million things to discuss. Mr. Ebert, 68, has reviewed movies for more than four decades. He’s driven around with Robert Mitchum while the actor got stoned and lost on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He once owned a 1957 Studebaker and still owns a Pulitzer Prize.
The thing is, he doesn’t eat and he doesn’t talk. Or rather, he can’t eat and he can’t talk. He hasn’t for four years, ever since cancer took his lower jaw, and three attempts to rebuild his face and his voice failed.
In those first few moments at the table, you try not to look at the empty place where his jaw used to be. You wonder how it feels to receive your nourishment through a tube directly into your stomach. You cringe when the waitress offers him a menu and asks if he wants something to drink.
But soon, in a flurry of hand gestures, glances, scribbles in a little spiral notebook and patient asides from his wife, Chaz, he’s having a conversation. You’re laughing. And you get to ask the question: How bad do you miss eating?
“For a few days I could think of nothing but root beer,” he said about the weeks after the surgery that removed much of his jaw. He passed through a candy fixation, romancing Red Hots and licorice-flavored Chuckles.
And he circled back time and again to a favorite meal served at Steak ’n Shake, an old-fashioned hamburger chain beloved in his part of the Midwest. When he wrote about it last year on his blog, Roger Ebert’s Journal, people saw that the legendary movie critic for The Chicago Sun-Times could also knock out some great food writing.
“A downstate Illinois boy loves the Steak ’n Shake as a Puerto Rican loves rice and beans, an Egyptian loves falafel, a Brit loves banger and mash, an Indian loves tikki ki chaat, a Swede loves herring, a Finn loves reindeer jerky, and a Canadian loves bran muffins,” he wrote. “These matters do not involve taste. They involve a deep-seated conviction that a food is absolutely right, and always has been, and always will be.”
He both writes and thinks about food in the present tense. Ask about favorite foods and he’ll scribble a note: “I love spicy and Indian.” An offer to bring some New Jersey peaches to his summer home here on the shore of Lake Michigan brings a sharp defense of Michigan peaches and a menu idea. “Maybe for dessert we could have a salad of local fresh fruits.”
“Food for me is in the present tense,” he said. “Eating for me is now only in the past tense.” He says he has a “voluptuous food memory” that gets stronger all the time.
“I can remember the taste and smell of everything, even though I can no longer taste or smell,” he said.
That is, he concedes later, a bit sweeping. He can’t remember the food at a French spa prepared by Michel Guérard, who has three Michelin stars. And he can’t recall the last meal he ever ate, because who knew then that surgeons would never be able to fix it all?
But he remembers everything about the food at the Steak ’n Shake. In the hospital, he told me, he ate Steak ’n Shake meals a bite at a time in his mind. Still, what he longs for most is the talk and fellowship of the table.
“The jokes, gossip, laughs, arguments and shared memories I miss,” he wrote in a blog post.
The eating itself is a side note, really. Anyone who has put together a winning dinner party understands that. But food — the cooking and sharing part of it — still means so much to him that he is publishing a cookbook this month. It’s based entirely on meals to be made in a rice cooker. The title is “The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker” (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $14.99).
How can a guy who has no tongue write a recipe?
“It’s all experience, my visuals and friendly tasters,” he wrote to me. “I’ve used The Pot so very many times I know what everything I make in it MUST taste like.”
The first rice cooker in the Ebert household was a wedding gift from the couple’s longtime friend and personal assistant, Carol Iwata. It wasn’t until Mr. Ebert became serious about losing weight and went to the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa in Florida that he began to tinker with cooking grains other than rice. He went nerdy and deep.
“Whenever Roger learns anything, he becomes obsessed with it,” Mrs. Ebert said.
Soon, entire meals were coming out of the rice cooker. He made fruit and oatmeal breakfasts and stews for supper, figuring out how to mess with the settings and stage the ingredients so that everything didn’t turn to mush.
He took his little three-cupper to Sundance so he could march through a marathon of movies with something more than popcorn and candy in his stomach.
In 2008, long after he accepted that he would never put food in his mouth again, he wrote a blog post presenting his philosophy of The Pot as a way for all the people with not much space and not much time or money to cook for themselves.
“I am thinking of you, student in your dorm room,” he wrote. “You, shut-in. You, recovering campaign worker. You, movie critic at Sundance. You, sex worker waiting for the phone to ring. You, factory worker sick of frozen meals. You, people in Werner Herzog’s documentary about life at the South Pole.”
The post became the frame for the book. “I am a quick, direct, practical and simple cook, which is why the rice cooker had such an appeal to me,” he explained.
“The Pot” follows food obsessions that include a long affair with a wok and with a Madhur Jaffrey dish that involves sealing a chicken in a pot with flour paste. Although Mr. Ebert often doesn’t follow cookbooks, his 150-volume collection includes well-used copies of “Craig Claiborne’s Kitchen Primer,” which taught him to cook, and a later edition of “Cooking in Ten Minutes,” published in 1948 by Édouard de Pomiane.
Most of the recipes came from Mr. Ebert’s head, from friends and from a dedicated group of blog readers who started a sub-cult built around him and rice cookers. They form just one of many tribes who have recently discovered him as a prolific, post-cancer online personality.
He spends hours propped in his reclining chairs at the couple’s homes in Chicago and here in Michigan, tending his blog and his Twitter account, which has nearly a quarter-million followers.
“The blog has opened a new world just when I needed it,” he told me.
Dorothy O’Brien, who edited the book, sent the recipes to professional testers to get the unruly collection into shape. There wasn’t much to do to the copy, though. It was nearly perfect.
The book, she said, is “more about his philosophy of food and eating and why we eat.” It also includes comments from his digital followers, which makes it something of a community cookbook.
“When he says he misses the camaraderie of eating, that’s what he misses more than the food,” she said.
Mr. Ebert wisely recruited Anna Thomas, the author of the classic “The Vegetarian Epicure” and the book “Love Soup,” as his culinary ombudswoman. She decries the limits of The Pot’s two settings — “insanely high and barely warm” — and argued against the inclusion of canned soup and powdered broth in many of the book’s recipes. (She lost.)
But she salutes the spirit of one-pot cooking and contributed recipes with smart ways to coax flavors from The Pot with browned onion and fresh ingredients, like ripe tomatoes in a summer soup with farro.
Health is a sub-theme. Mr. Ebert remains obsessed with grains and sodium levels, lessons he learned when his wife persuaded him to go to the Pritikin Center to lose weight. He dropped about 70 pounds just before he got sick, and another 40 or so during his illness.
The book is funny, too. His list of meats to throw into The Pot includes chicken, pork, goat and Minotaur. In explaining how The Pot knows when the rice is done, he writes: “It is an ancient mystery of the Orient. Don’t ask questions you don’t need the answers to.”
Cooking with Mr. Ebert, who can’t speak but has a very deliberate way in the kitchen, is both a thrill and a challenge. His physical condition limits the time he can spend there, but he makes good use of it, keeping things simple and relying on the Cuisinart to chop ingredients, even for a salad.
Mrs. Ebert, a lawyer who grew up in a big family and is more used to cooking for a crowd, designed the huge kitchen in the lake house, which her husband has owned since the 1980s. It has generous counters and an oversize table that seats a dozen. They have hosted Fourth of July parties with 300 people and Thanksgiving for 30.
Since his operations, the cooking has been on a much smaller scale.
The dish we prepared one day last month didn’t have a name and wasn’t written down anywhere.
Because I had no idea where we were going as we cooked, it rendered the session something like a “Top Chef” challenge. He started by dumping water into The Pot with a store-bought blend of rice, grain and lentils called SooFoo. Then he sent me to chop some Michigan peaches. “Better use ripe peach,” he scribbled when I was slicing one that seemed a bit hard. “I handed to you.”
I had to guess what he meant when he waved off the bowl I selected to hold the yellow peppers I had chopped. Was it the bowl or was the chopping wrong?
At one point, I think he got very frustrated. He wanted to make a nice lunch, but I kept interrupting him with questions. A photographer kept taking pictures. Mrs. Ebert, who has a rare patience, was getting tired.
He scribbled a few hurried instructions for me and left the kitchen. He hadn’t taken any nourishment in a while, and his shoulder, whose muscle had been used in an effort to repair his face, had started to ache.
He eased into the big black recliner in his study, and his wife got out a can of the Isosource that keeps him alive. He takes about six cans four times a day, mixed with water. Sometimes he gets fresh fruit or vegetable juice or a little shot of Pepsi, which helps clean the tube.
While he’s in the chair, I tend to the onions and garlic in one pot and keep stirring the grains, peaches and pork in another. I mix them together, as he instructed. I peek into the study and watch him take his liquid meal, embarrassed by my curiosity.
After about 15 minutes he walks out and scribbles me a note.
“I’m sure you made certain the pork was heated through.”
Yes, chef, I say.
He scribbles again. It’s an apology.
“I come across as a tyrannical chef because I never speak and am in a hurry because of my shoulder.”
No worries, chef, I say. Then I lift the lid from The Pot.
He pours a little spicy Saigon Sizzle sauce from a bottle and stirs it in.
Then he gives me a thumbs up. It’s time to eat.
August 31, 2010
Roger Ebert: No Longer an Eater, Still a Cook
By KIM SEVERSON
Harbert, Mich.
THE first several minutes at a restaurant with Roger Ebert are awkward.
It’s not that you can’t find a million things to discuss. Mr. Ebert, 68, has reviewed movies for more than four decades. He’s driven around with Robert Mitchum while the actor got stoned and lost on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He once owned a 1957 Studebaker and still owns a Pulitzer Prize.
The thing is, he doesn’t eat and he doesn’t talk. Or rather, he can’t eat and he can’t talk. He hasn’t for four years, ever since cancer took his lower jaw, and three attempts to rebuild his face and his voice failed.
In those first few moments at the table, you try not to look at the empty place where his jaw used to be. You wonder how it feels to receive your nourishment through a tube directly into your stomach. You cringe when the waitress offers him a menu and asks if he wants something to drink.
But soon, in a flurry of hand gestures, glances, scribbles in a little spiral notebook and patient asides from his wife, Chaz, he’s having a conversation. You’re laughing. And you get to ask the question: How bad do you miss eating?
“For a few days I could think of nothing but root beer,” he said about the weeks after the surgery that removed much of his jaw. He passed through a candy fixation, romancing Red Hots and licorice-flavored Chuckles.
And he circled back time and again to a favorite meal served at Steak ’n Shake, an old-fashioned hamburger chain beloved in his part of the Midwest. When he wrote about it last year on his blog, Roger Ebert’s Journal, people saw that the legendary movie critic for The Chicago Sun-Times could also knock out some great food writing.
“A downstate Illinois boy loves the Steak ’n Shake as a Puerto Rican loves rice and beans, an Egyptian loves falafel, a Brit loves banger and mash, an Indian loves tikki ki chaat, a Swede loves herring, a Finn loves reindeer jerky, and a Canadian loves bran muffins,” he wrote. “These matters do not involve taste. They involve a deep-seated conviction that a food is absolutely right, and always has been, and always will be.”
He both writes and thinks about food in the present tense. Ask about favorite foods and he’ll scribble a note: “I love spicy and Indian.” An offer to bring some New Jersey peaches to his summer home here on the shore of Lake Michigan brings a sharp defense of Michigan peaches and a menu idea. “Maybe for dessert we could have a salad of local fresh fruits.”
“Food for me is in the present tense,” he said. “Eating for me is now only in the past tense.” He says he has a “voluptuous food memory” that gets stronger all the time.
“I can remember the taste and smell of everything, even though I can no longer taste or smell,” he said.
That is, he concedes later, a bit sweeping. He can’t remember the food at a French spa prepared by Michel Guérard, who has three Michelin stars. And he can’t recall the last meal he ever ate, because who knew then that surgeons would never be able to fix it all?
But he remembers everything about the food at the Steak ’n Shake. In the hospital, he told me, he ate Steak ’n Shake meals a bite at a time in his mind. Still, what he longs for most is the talk and fellowship of the table.
“The jokes, gossip, laughs, arguments and shared memories I miss,” he wrote in a blog post.
The eating itself is a side note, really. Anyone who has put together a winning dinner party understands that. But food — the cooking and sharing part of it — still means so much to him that he is publishing a cookbook this month. It’s based entirely on meals to be made in a rice cooker. The title is “The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker” (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $14.99).
How can a guy who has no tongue write a recipe?
“It’s all experience, my visuals and friendly tasters,” he wrote to me. “I’ve used The Pot so very many times I know what everything I make in it MUST taste like.”
The first rice cooker in the Ebert household was a wedding gift from the couple’s longtime friend and personal assistant, Carol Iwata. It wasn’t until Mr. Ebert became serious about losing weight and went to the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa in Florida that he began to tinker with cooking grains other than rice. He went nerdy and deep.
“Whenever Roger learns anything, he becomes obsessed with it,” Mrs. Ebert said.
Soon, entire meals were coming out of the rice cooker. He made fruit and oatmeal breakfasts and stews for supper, figuring out how to mess with the settings and stage the ingredients so that everything didn’t turn to mush.
He took his little three-cupper to Sundance so he could march through a marathon of movies with something more than popcorn and candy in his stomach.
In 2008, long after he accepted that he would never put food in his mouth again, he wrote a blog post presenting his philosophy of The Pot as a way for all the people with not much space and not much time or money to cook for themselves.
“I am thinking of you, student in your dorm room,” he wrote. “You, shut-in. You, recovering campaign worker. You, movie critic at Sundance. You, sex worker waiting for the phone to ring. You, factory worker sick of frozen meals. You, people in Werner Herzog’s documentary about life at the South Pole.”
The post became the frame for the book. “I am a quick, direct, practical and simple cook, which is why the rice cooker had such an appeal to me,” he explained.
“The Pot” follows food obsessions that include a long affair with a wok and with a Madhur Jaffrey dish that involves sealing a chicken in a pot with flour paste. Although Mr. Ebert often doesn’t follow cookbooks, his 150-volume collection includes well-used copies of “Craig Claiborne’s Kitchen Primer,” which taught him to cook, and a later edition of “Cooking in Ten Minutes,” published in 1948 by Édouard de Pomiane.
Most of the recipes came from Mr. Ebert’s head, from friends and from a dedicated group of blog readers who started a sub-cult built around him and rice cookers. They form just one of many tribes who have recently discovered him as a prolific, post-cancer online personality.
He spends hours propped in his reclining chairs at the couple’s homes in Chicago and here in Michigan, tending his blog and his Twitter account, which has nearly a quarter-million followers.
“The blog has opened a new world just when I needed it,” he told me.
Dorothy O’Brien, who edited the book, sent the recipes to professional testers to get the unruly collection into shape. There wasn’t much to do to the copy, though. It was nearly perfect.
The book, she said, is “more about his philosophy of food and eating and why we eat.” It also includes comments from his digital followers, which makes it something of a community cookbook.
“When he says he misses the camaraderie of eating, that’s what he misses more than the food,” she said.
Mr. Ebert wisely recruited Anna Thomas, the author of the classic “The Vegetarian Epicure” and the book “Love Soup,” as his culinary ombudswoman. She decries the limits of The Pot’s two settings — “insanely high and barely warm” — and argued against the inclusion of canned soup and powdered broth in many of the book’s recipes. (She lost.)
But she salutes the spirit of one-pot cooking and contributed recipes with smart ways to coax flavors from The Pot with browned onion and fresh ingredients, like ripe tomatoes in a summer soup with farro.
Health is a sub-theme. Mr. Ebert remains obsessed with grains and sodium levels, lessons he learned when his wife persuaded him to go to the Pritikin Center to lose weight. He dropped about 70 pounds just before he got sick, and another 40 or so during his illness.
The book is funny, too. His list of meats to throw into The Pot includes chicken, pork, goat and Minotaur. In explaining how The Pot knows when the rice is done, he writes: “It is an ancient mystery of the Orient. Don’t ask questions you don’t need the answers to.”
Cooking with Mr. Ebert, who can’t speak but has a very deliberate way in the kitchen, is both a thrill and a challenge. His physical condition limits the time he can spend there, but he makes good use of it, keeping things simple and relying on the Cuisinart to chop ingredients, even for a salad.
Mrs. Ebert, a lawyer who grew up in a big family and is more used to cooking for a crowd, designed the huge kitchen in the lake house, which her husband has owned since the 1980s. It has generous counters and an oversize table that seats a dozen. They have hosted Fourth of July parties with 300 people and Thanksgiving for 30.
Since his operations, the cooking has been on a much smaller scale.
The dish we prepared one day last month didn’t have a name and wasn’t written down anywhere.
Because I had no idea where we were going as we cooked, it rendered the session something like a “Top Chef” challenge. He started by dumping water into The Pot with a store-bought blend of rice, grain and lentils called SooFoo. Then he sent me to chop some Michigan peaches. “Better use ripe peach,” he scribbled when I was slicing one that seemed a bit hard. “I handed to you.”
I had to guess what he meant when he waved off the bowl I selected to hold the yellow peppers I had chopped. Was it the bowl or was the chopping wrong?
At one point, I think he got very frustrated. He wanted to make a nice lunch, but I kept interrupting him with questions. A photographer kept taking pictures. Mrs. Ebert, who has a rare patience, was getting tired.
He scribbled a few hurried instructions for me and left the kitchen. He hadn’t taken any nourishment in a while, and his shoulder, whose muscle had been used in an effort to repair his face, had started to ache.
He eased into the big black recliner in his study, and his wife got out a can of the Isosource that keeps him alive. He takes about six cans four times a day, mixed with water. Sometimes he gets fresh fruit or vegetable juice or a little shot of Pepsi, which helps clean the tube.
While he’s in the chair, I tend to the onions and garlic in one pot and keep stirring the grains, peaches and pork in another. I mix them together, as he instructed. I peek into the study and watch him take his liquid meal, embarrassed by my curiosity.
After about 15 minutes he walks out and scribbles me a note.
“I’m sure you made certain the pork was heated through.”
Yes, chef, I say.
He scribbles again. It’s an apology.
“I come across as a tyrannical chef because I never speak and am in a hurry because of my shoulder.”
No worries, chef, I say. Then I lift the lid from The Pot.
He pours a little spicy Saigon Sizzle sauce from a bottle and stirs it in.
Then he gives me a thumbs up. It’s time to eat.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)